Conspiracy theories

1. There are those who firmly believe that someone other than a drunk driver killed Diana, Princess of Wales, and her lover, Dodi al Fayed, in Paris in 1997. And this week's revelation that she feared an arranged car crash would clear the way for Prince Charles to remarry has raised all the best conspiracy theories once more.

2. Who doesn't enjoy a good conspiracy theory? Crop circles have proved to be a fascinating area for debate for years: are they the work of aliens? Natural energy? Mad landscape architects?

3. The epicentre of the alien conspiracies crash-landed into Roswell, New Mexico in 1947. Some say that the US military recovered and concealed an alien craft and its occupants at Roswell air force base. The US military claims that the only strange bodies recovered were those of anthropomorphic test dummies carried in high altitude balloons for scientific research.

5. Though JFK theories would at least seem to be based on evidence and witness accounts, some conspiracy theorists need no such facts. Footballer turned lizard conspirator David Icke has written ten books and toured the world on the back of his theory - that the world is controlled by shape-shifting reptiles.

6. US politics is rife with conspiracies, not that the 2000 "election" helped matters. The latest involves electronic voting machines, and the possibility that the companies who make them could warp the outcomes of elections.

7. Islamist hijackers financed by a Saudi terrorist network hellbent on the destruction of western civilisation seemed, to many, too straightforward a scenario for the September 11 terror attacks in New York, Washington and Pennsylvania. Step forward Michael Meacher, the former environment secretary, who is convinced that the US knew in advance about the impending attacks, but chose not to act on the warnings.

8. The Catholic church has been the target of numerous paranoid theories throughout the ages, but the Vatican gives as good as it gets. Its latest idea, that condoms spread Aids through microscopic holes in the latex, has been widely condemned by scientists. But the atheist heathens at the World Health Organisation would say that, wouldn't they?

9. A recent study found that 60% of the US population believed one of the following: that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq, that Saddam Hussein worked closely with the September 11 hijackers, and that most people in the world supported the war in Iraq. All are false. However, 80% of people who cited their primary news source as Fox believed at least one of the statements.

10. We have uncovered one, incontrovertibly true, conspiracy involving MI6, the Libyans and the royal family. It seems that the Queen [this section has been redacted by the Guardian's legal team]. You read it here first.